[ARC5] Torpedoes (After WWII)

[WA5CAB at cs.com]

And the MK-37 became the MK-67 Mobile Mine.  We also used the MK-48 in 
another application.  All no doubt gone to Hawthorne by now.

Robert Downs - Houston
wa5cab dot com (Web Store)
MVPA 9480

In a message dated 07/04/2013 14:12:36 PM Central Daylight Time, 
kk5f at earthlink.net writes: 
> >And the current fleet heavy duty torpedo, the MK-48 has been deployed 
> since 
> >1972 with a number of upgrades since it is a modular design.
> >http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=2100&tid=950&ct=2
> 
> My boat, the ballistic missile submarine USS Daniel Boone (SSBN-629), 
> still
> retained a significant war load of the WWII-vintage Mark 14 steam 
> torpedoes
> through the mid-1970s.  I was surprised at that, and I wondered if any
> came close to being assigned to my father's sub, USS Sawfish (SS-276),
> during WWII.
> 
> We also carried the Mark 37 electric homing torpedoes, and the Mark 45
> ASTOR nuclear warhead torpedo.  The latter was a real pain...being a
> nuclear weapon caused all sorts of administrative requirements in port,
> including continuous monitoring by the 4FZ alarm system and always
> needing the presence of two or more men in its vicinity.
> 
> By the late 1970s, we had eliminated the Mark 14 and Mark 45 units,
> kept the Mark 37 units, and added the USN's star performer, the
> Mark 48.
> 
> USN ballistic missile submarines before the late 1970s typically had
> a better torpedo fire-control system than the attack submarines did,
> even though the attack submarines were the torpedo launch specialists.
> This is because of the computational power provided by the Poseidon
> SLBM fire control digital geoballistic computers, one of which could
> when not at Battle Stations Missile be assigned to the Mark 78 digital
> target motion analyzer (TMA) for the torpedo fire control system.
> (I was the TMA operator for Battle Stations Torpedo.)  The attack subs,
> in contrast, lacked that computer power and had only a weakly-capable
> Mark 51 TMA.
> 
> All that changed by the late 1970s, as redundant light-weight low-volume
> computers like the AN/UYK-7 became available for attack sub service.
> Those began then to get state-of-the-art fire control systems.
>